


Go Back Three Spaces

by ljs



Series: the Deep Ellum stories [6]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 05:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5117684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU, diverging from canon after "Selfless" (and AtS "Dead End"); this fic is set in 2008, after the Deep Ellum fics (see fic tags; also, Heron Pose's Gethsemane.). All you need to know is that Giles and Anya live in a funky Dallas neighbourhood and work for a mysterious, benevolent otherworldly figure named the Blind One.</p><p>It's just another November night in Deep Ellum, with visitors and friends and a happy secret. Who would have guessed it could go so wrong...</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?</i></p><p> </p><p>Written in 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The sun has fallen early, now that the clocks have been changed back to proper time, and the first autumn storm has come in hard, with wind and rain which makes Giles think nostalgically of England. On this early November night in Dallas, it's nicer inside than out, with lamplight and friends and good food and drink, and --

Fucking hell, this hand is possibly the worst one dealt since the invention of poker.

Giles looks at his cards one more time, sighs, then throws them face-down on the table. “Fold.”

"Lost your nerve, old man?" Spike says, rattling his poker chips for effect.

Giles smiles coolly and pushes back from his dining-room table. “No, Spike, it's just that you deal cards as well as you make plans. Or, more accurately, as badly.” Over the ensuing splutter: “I'm out for a bit. Lindsey, Terrence, I hope you take the stupid berk for everything he's got.”

“Buddy, it shall be done,” Lindsey says with his best lawyer's smile.

Terrence rubs his shaved head – his signature move for luck -- before settling his green visor more firmly over his eyes. “Less talking, gentlemen, more playing.”

Before they could play out the hand, however, Lindsey tugs on Giles' sleeve. “Hey, listen, you think I can get away with a cigarillo before Anya gets here?”

Giles' mouth waters at the very mention of a smoke. But it's been years since he'd indulged – well, rather, since his partner has allowed him a cigarette. Luckily he adores her beyond all telling, or he'd be tempted to break the rules even now...

He glances at his watch, then shakes his head. “She should be home presently, mate. Can't risk her wrath, you know she'd bloody smell it.”

"No smoking in front of my baby sister, anyway!” Buffy calls, at which Dawn punches her in the shoulder. He doesn't blame Dawn, however; no twenty-something Watcher would appreciate such a sodding belittling term, even from the Queen Slayer. Not of course that he would be foolhardy enough to let Buffy know he occasionally thinks of her with that unapproved New-Council nickname.

He always has been good at keeping secrets.

Terrence calls Lindsey's and Spike's attention back to the game, and after a quick glance to make sure that no one requires a refill of their wine or beer, Giles wanders off to Anya's old ice-cream table (which he'd wrestled down from the storage room and put under one of the big windows for the party), where Buffy and Dawn are laying out Anya's vintage Monopoly board.

He rests his hands on their shoulders, a connection, a way to signify his pleasure at their presence in his and Anya's home. Dawn of course is in and out of the flat all the time, now that she lives and works in Dallas – but that latter fact means that Buffy and her, er, consort visit often too, when apocalyptic rumblings are down to a simmer and the New Council and Slayer-children in London have everything well in hand.

He registers Buffy's tension as well, however. She and said stupid-berk consort aren't quite getting on at the moment; they've been snappish and avoidant ever since they'd got off the plane two days ago. Even now she's quite markedly not looking at Spike, who's putting on his own theatrical unconcern.

Giles sighs, and then looks out the undraped window. Anya's light-catcher focusses the diffuse city evening, makes everything seem rich, warm blue and red, changes the cold falling rain to gems. Beyond and above, the Blind One's windows are shuttered light.

As soon as Anya gets home, he'll turn the problem of Buffy and Spike over to her. This is _not_ his area, never has been.

His attention is recalled by Dawn rubbing her cheek against his arm. “Hey, Giles, should I get another chair? Are you going to play Monopoly with us?”

“That would be a No, Dawn, as you're well aware. Er, since Anya will be joining you once she returns.” Idly he picks up the top card from the stack Dawn has just tidied. **Chance** , it says.

"You guys okay?" Buffy says. Projecting, no doubt.

He makes his smile as reassuring as he can. “We're perfectly fine. It's, just, well, with competitive sports or games and the like...”

Dawn makes a deeply annoying exploding-bomb sound. “Yeah, I forgot. It's so funny -- you guys work together all the time under the worst circumstances and you're great, but once a game starts, so does World War III.”

“Er, this is because with game-playing, there's always a winner and a bloody loser. Neither of us is particularly good at losing.” Grinning, he flicks her nose with the Chance card, as if she were still the teenager she'd once been. “Poor child, to have stumbled into the crossfire so very often...”

She grins back. “I _know_. The yelling, the accusations of cheating, the dramatic slamming of doors and the fake-tears – I'm totally scarred for life.”

Beside them, Buffy makes a strange, unhappy gesture. He doesn't quite know what it means, if her unease is about their shared Sunnydale history or Dawn's history without her. So he contents himself with a squeeze of Buffy's shoulder and a quiet, “Right. Well, er, I'll just go check on the food...Anya had a few surprises hidden away, I should find them before she gets in.”

“Where is she, anyway?” Dawn says.

He merely smiles at her as he walks away. He always has been good at keeping secrets.

In the kitchen Ruth and Brick are arranging some spinach-and-feta snacks on a baking tray. Giles privately appreciates Ruth's courage: to be in a chattering crowd, including two not-quite-strangers (one of whom has fangs), usually exacerbates her social anxiety, but she appears to be quite well, laughing with Brick over the patterns he's making with the tiny squares.

Of course it's hard not to feel good around Brick – who's on his own tonight, since his partners Michael and Horace are off bowling on the Blind Willie's team in the Deep Ellum league. ( _Bowling_. Honestly. Giles and Brick are as one in their poor opinion of that particular sport.) So Brick has put on his best Marlon Brando T-shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots, and his red party kimono and his eyeliner, and come to join them. He's the only one who could ever hope to compete with Anya at Monopoly...

“Rupert-Rupert!” Brick says, with a sidelong glance. “You didn't answer Shiny-Hair out there. Where is our gypsy Anya?”

Giles checks to make sure that no one is close enough to hear. “Shhh. She's helping Tyrone with an important purchase – but that's not for public knowledge.”

The commitment band on his wrist hums pleasantly for just a second, and he smiles.

But Ruth frowns, before wiping her hands nervously on her jeans and saying only for his ears, “Weren't they going to buy it at North Park? Is, um, is Tyrone going to make sure she's okay in the parking lot? In the dark?”

He had forgot that Ruth's in on the plan. Just as quietly, “I'm sure he won't let her walk by herself. Not these days, when it gets dark so soon, and...”

His commitment band hums again, less pleasantly.

At times Anya's independence in these small everyday matters worries him. He realizes her insistence is a reaction to her past – the way she once remade herself for Xander, and for Olaf, and her resulting personal disasters – which sometimes makes him a trifle insecure in turn, regardless of the strength of their partnership. And whenever he tentatively broaches the subject of regularizing their relationship beyond their commitment-bands, she always turns the conversation, or seduces him...

That isn't important. However, he also worries that she might dance herself into trouble. Smart and competent she is, but her active nature can make her less cautious than he (or, at least, than he is these days. He learnt a great deal from his last Los Angeles hell-visit, and some of the recklessness he once had to suppress has dissipated on its own).

At least the supernatural and paranormal villains should be tucked away for the moment. He and the Blind One meditated together that afternoon, and the boss confirmed his own sense that the hidden world is ticking along well. Dawn's Slayer can easily handle what threats remain. Probably.

“Dawn!” he calls through the open window between kitchen and living area. “Is LuAnn patrolling tonight?”

“Yes, there's a possible vamp nest on Turtle Creek. But she's got a sorority thing first,” Dawn says brightly. “She's going after chapter, she said.”

It's a near-run thing, but he manages not to roll his eyes. Dawn's Slayer is now attending Southern Methodist University – which he approves, of course – but she's also pledged one of those American sororities. He'd commented acerbically to Anya that he didn't quite see how being a Kappa Kappa Gamma fit with Slayer-powers, but she'd pointed out that he was a fifty-something Englishman, how could he understand American college customs, and anyway he should just have Buffy talk to the girl. “It's hard to be normal,” she'd said. “Buffy knows.”

He looks again at Buffy arguing with Dawn over who gets to be the shoe, and then at Spike – who's positioned himself with his back to Buffy. He looks at the empty chair which will be Anya's, whenever she gets back.

Normal. Right.

Giles takes out the worry-talisman Anya gave him on his first full day in Dallas and begins to roll it around his palm. The feel of it soothes him. He sometimes fancies he can feel its eternity-symbol against his skin.

“Giles?” Ruth says hesitantly, recalling him from his drifting thoughts.

He smiles at her, regardless of his inner feelings. “Sorry, Ruth. Just... er, thinking about where Anya had put the good veggie-crisps.”

“Pantry?” Brick says. “Just a guess.”

At that moment Spike growls, Lindsey crows over his winning hand, and Dawn turns up the stereo -- one of Anya's favourite mix-CDs, which unfortunately features Brick and Anya's shared musical obsession. Brick crows louder than MacDonald and that horrifying Stevie Nicks. (Giles knows Anya had done some vengeance-work for Ms Nicks, but he never can bring himself to ask for specifics.)

“'Stand back!'” Brick sings dramatically, then, “Ruth my dove, could you open the oven door for me?”

Laughing, she does. Giles feels the wave of unbound heat all the way across the kitchen. Brick, singing properly, slides the baking tray inside, slams the door, and then twirls so fast that his untied red kimono flutters free.

Giles closes his eyes, but the red seems to fill his inner vision, expanding to cover the world. Flutter becomes a beating, a tide of blood...

“Who's the winner then? Who's the fuckin' badass?” Lindsey says smugly over Brick's singing and Terrence's irritated rumble.

“I'll bet you everything you've got,” Buffy says. To Dawn, perhaps, but perhaps not.

Outside, a sudden gust of rain-heavy wind rattles the windows. Inside and nearby, just barely audible in the commotion, comes the scrape of a dial turning, and then the ticking begins. Timer has been set.

Giles closes his fist over his worry-talisman. He needs to feel that eternity-symbol.

.......................................

 

“I know you've got to go... but are you sure Dawn will like it?” Tyrone says for the fifth time.

Through the plate-glass doors of the NorthPark Neiman Marcus, Anya can see the rain sweeping across the parking lot. It's going to be a nasty drive home, she needs to get started. But because she loves Tyrone despite his male stupidity, she takes a breath and then says as kindly as she can, “I told you, the ring is the perfect choice. In my espionage before this mission I confirmed that she likes diamonds' sparkle plus that little emerald in there to honour her glowy Key heritage, and it'll fit, which I've also checked twice. You did good, okay?”

He shoves his hands into his pockets – which ruins the line of his Italian suit, something she knows he'd never do if he weren't so rattled. “Okay. Okay, Anya, I'm sure you're right.”

“Your wobbliness is just pre-proposal nerves, it's perfectly understandable. Now it's almost time to actually propose.” She pats his shoulder briskly. “Also, you can do so with the knowledge you got a good deal.”

“Thank the Lord for employee discounts,” he says, with the charming expression Dawn always calls his 'Will Smith grin.'

“I'm all for discounts in the right place,” Anya says. “Now, since we've got that settled, I want to get home to Rupert and the party we're giving!”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really do appreciate your help. The party's a great, um, deflection-tactic for Dawn, too – but let me get my raincoat and I'll walk you out.” He arches an eyebrow. “Of course, if you'd used the valet parking like I asked you to...”

She's already moving, one hand to her umbrella, one hand almost to the cold glass. “There is no reason to spend good money that way, and, sweetie, I can walk by myself.”

“I could have validated. Anyway, Anya, just hang on. You know there's the... thing.” He looks around – ever the stalwart Neiman Marcus management-type, who won't talk bad stuff in front of customers – before saying in a lowered voice, “With all that car-jacking lately, I'm damn sure Giles wouldn't want you to go out alone. Let me get my coat.”

Anya pauses. Storm's so close she can almost feel the rain on her face, but she's still on this protected side. “I've been walking by myself for a thousand years, Tyrone. There's no need to be so conventionally male about this – you or Rupert.”

“Thing is, you don't have to walk alone any more.” His hand catches at the belt of her charity-shop 70s Bill Blass topper --

But then a highly lacquered saleswoman coughs right behind him, and says, “Mr Henderson, could you spare a moment? We've got a question about the latest memo from Purchasing...”

Conscientious Tyrone hesitates just long enough for Anya to slip out the door, calling, “See you at the party in a little while!”

The rain and wind is worse than it looked from the other side -- like cold knives gleaming in the dark (although rain here isn't actually full of blades; that was another dimension, one she hadn't liked to work). She stops for a minute to button her coat against the bad weather. As she works up toward her neck, though, her hand brushes against the sigilite pendant she always wears, and she smiles. Out of that Los Angeles nightmare those years ago, at least Rupert found this wonderful stone.

Before she does up the top button, she touches the pendant at its heart, right over the eternity-sign. Sometimes she thought she could feel the sign pressing into her skin. But those times she also thought about how eternity was for many individuals a punishment full of pain, violence, and nibbling bunny-teeth, so she doesn't let herself think that way tonight. She just thinks about Rupert, and feels warm in the cold.

From behind her comes a hoarse male voice. “Ma'am? Do you... are you waiting for me?”

She glances over her shoulder – yep, it's the valet, and he looks miserable, poor man. “Thank you, but no! Stay there!” she says, and waves, and steps herself into the rain.

Without putting up her umbrella first. Tactical error. And one which can't be retrieved, since she 's already soaked in just those few steps.

Frowning, umbrella-less, she goes on.

She's got a long way to go, unfortunately. Last Christmas (Hanukah Solstice Kwanzaa, and their fourth anniversary of exchanging commitment-bands) she and Rupert agreed to buy a new vehicle to replace her old compact car, which somehow turned into Rupert, Tyrone the car expert, and Lindsey all going to some highly secret car-purchasing location and coming back with a 'gently used' Mercedes sedan. It's the pride of Rupert's heart, although at the time he claimed it was a joint present for them both, ha ha, and so he insists on babying it with practices such as always parking away from the crowd at the furthest reaches of the parking lot. (Didn't stop them christening the backseat with a quickie, of course. That had been another cold night: the leather of the seat cold against her back even through the T-shirt she kept on, the air chilly on her bare legs as Rupert pulled them around his hips, but he had been warm, warm as anything, when he'd come inside.)

The rain's interfering with her vision on this long journey. She wipes away precipitation, curses, and only then steps ankle-deep into a puddle.

This minor catastrophe makes her think about validation, somehow. Not the valet-parking kind.

During the past couple of years – after Los Angeles, and all of that awfulness– she catches Rupert watching her sometimes. Part of it's just Rupert: surveillance, detachment, and all that jazz is in his blood. Part of it, though, is as if he's got a question he's not asking.

He loves her, she knows that. He's shown her, not least with the rooftop garden he made for her (and himself) after that LA trip. But she wonders if she's failing him somehow. It's like he tests her, or maybe that's just her own fear talking. She meditates with the Blind One too, and she practices introspection, which she finds unpleasant but necessary, and she stops herself from going down bad paths most of the time, but....

In the past year or so he's occasionally brought up marriage in an idle way, and for her it's always like a splash of icy water, like fear expanding to fill a tight place. Is there a right answer to his question? What does he want? How much has she earned?

She walks on in the rain, alone under the lights.

Dawn and Tyrone, she thinks, are going to be fine. Tyrone, for all his education and easiness with metaphysical and/or supernatural weirdness, can be kind of a conventional guy – and he wants to give Mama Henderson a grandchild, because Shanice doesn't want one. (Shanice and her long-term guy Walter, a DPD cop with his own streak of independence, won't get married either, because of philosophical reasons. Mama Henderson starts breaking cookies into her coffee and muttering complaints to Jesus under her breath whenever this comes up, as Anya's witnessed.) And Dawn craves her own family, something not imposed on her by crazy-ass monks, even though she loves her created one too.

For a moment Anya feels the sigilite pendant lying snug against her skin, and she thinks of sparks and transformation. But it's just the strange hum from the parking-lot light overhead as it fades for a moment. Just an ordinary loss of light.

She's almost to the car, anyway. Not to worry.

She stops by the car door and starts rooting around her purse for her key. It's somewhere here, she'll find it by touch.

The roar of the Central Expressway just on the other side of the divide swells. The light overhead begins to brighten. Her cold-numbed fingers touch the ring on which her keys chime --

And then she is pushed against the Mercedes by rough hands. She tries to protest, but she's kicked against the door. She loses breath in the sudden pain. From far away she hears the valet shout “Hey!” and then Tyrone shout her name. From nearby, a couple of male voices growl – _hurry you fucker_ , _gotta take the bitch_ \-- and the keys are ripped from her hand.

She falls. Her head hits the pavement, and it's all roar and blackness swallowing her up.

..........................................

 

The edge of the metal burns through the kitchen cloth, singes Giles's fingers, makes him curse under his breath. Then, louder, “Fuck it all!”

He spills the spinach-and-feta appetizers onto the plate Ruth's laid out, then drops the hot tray into the sink and turns on the tap. Cold water hisses onto hot metal – at least until he shoves his reddened, aching fingers under the flow.

When he shuts off the tap, his hand hurts like anything.

“Nice move, Giles,” Buffy says from behind him. When he turns, she's got a teasing gleam. “You haven't learned much kitchen magic from those days in Sunnydale, huh? Remember that Thanksgiving we had at your place?”

He's ready to say something caustic about the way she and the Scoobies had invaded his space in those days, or at least something rude about ricers, when Spike says from behind her, “Ah yes, good times. Planning to tie me up again, Slayer?”

“No,” she says briefly. Spike sags against the countertop, and Giles can see bafflement and frustration in his eyes. But what does the git expect, bringing up that element of their past....

She takes one of the hot snacks, hisses like water on metal at the contact, then pushes past Spike to go back to the room with the games.

Giles blows on his burn to ease it, to give himself time to think. Once he's certain he's centered, he says calmly, “Problems? Anything I can do?”

Spike's expression is half-smirk, half-sadness. “You think you can ever do anything, old man?” But he pats Giles on the shoulder in an awkward return of kindness before taking two beers from the refrigerator. As he goes back out, he says with burning self-mockery, “'You made a bear! Undo it! Undo it!'”

Giles laughs. Then he recalls that it was Buffy who summoned the bear, and he thinks of old stories and new perspectives, and he thinks about undoing.

Then he pours himself a glass of Shiraz and tells himself to forget it.

Before he can leave the kitchen with his wine in hand, however, Dawn arrives – with his sword-stick. Beaming in a rather Anya-like fashion, she says, “Hey, big guy. I'll trade you your cane for that Chance card you stole.”

“I what?”

“Stole a Chance card.” She points to his shirt pocket, where in fact the edge of a card glows orange, although he doesn't remember taking it. “How can we play without all the cards? And anyway, I know you're hurting a bit, you're doing the not-quite-limping thing.”

He's annoyed at her perception, but she's not wrong. It's growing impossible to ignore his old war-wounds on a damp night like this. So he manages a smile and says, “Deal.”

When he hands over the card, however, he reads it – **Go back three spaces** – and his smile fades.

Christ, he wants Anya. He wants Anya home.

The phone rings. About time, he thinks, as he reaches for it. The Caller Identification thing shows Tyrone's mobile, which is slightly worrying: “Giles here. Hullo, Ty.”

“Giles. Ah, Jesus, Giles.” Tyrone's voice on the phone is ragged enough that Giles slowly puts down his wine. “It's... Anya.”

The air seems to have been sucked out of the room. Giles swallows hard. “What's happened?”

“Car-jacked.” The word is bitten-off.

“What?” Giles says. The flat has gone silent. There's nothing except the hammer of wind and rain and Tyrone's words.

“Jesus,” Tyrone says again. “Look, Giles, we've called the cops, and Walter's on it, but... I told her to wait for me, but she just went out to the car by herself, I couldn't....” He stops. Collects himself. “Okay, here's the deal. Joaquin – the valet-parking guy – and I saw them from a distance. Two men. They hit her, took her keys, put her in the car, and drove off. I followed on foot, tried to catch them...”

Tyrone's voice fades in Giles' ears. He can't hear anything now, he's gone cold with the effort of imagining this horror. His Anya, hurt, frightened, alone -- “Oh, God, no.”

Vaguely he knows that Dawn's taken the phone away from him, she's speaking to Tyrone fast and purposeful, but he's detaching, as he always has done when the hurt is too great.

When he shoves his hand into his pocket to catch up his talisman, the stone rubs against his burn. He barely feels it.


	2. Chapter 2

The sensations don't make sense.

It's dark, but lights are passing overhead, a flash and then gone. Her cheek against the leather seat registers cold. She's chilled and aching, and her head hurts. She smells unpleasant sweat and dirt nearby, there are strange male voices. The world rumbles in a familiar-unfamiliar way.

Anya swims back to consciousness and a confused awareness of where she is. Backseat of the Mercedes. No warm Rupert. Someone's taking her away.

Words come from the front seat. She can't quite make out all the words, but what she gets is terrifying enough as it is. _Lie low_ , says one voice, _gonna make some money on this one_. Says another, _Kill the bitch_.

That one gets through.

Terror, and anger, and more terror. The car becomes a small enclosed place for her, a trap. Her latent claustrophobia swells.

She forces herself to move back to anger, although guilt wants to take over. It's her own damn fault. She should have waited for Tyrone, should have stopped to think, should have, this is what she deserves, should have....

She should do something now.

Making herself breathe, she considers this. They want to kill her, it seems, so what could distract them... She thinks about using the jack on their thick heads, but it's in the trunk. She thinks about screaming, but it wouldn't be distraction. She thinks about calling Rupert – she sees her purse, and its contents spilled out on the floorboards-- but like an idiot, she left her cell at home.

Then she thinks about magic.

Since the Los Angeles trip she's been practising her spellcasting, with the assistance of the Blind One and the long-distance help and commentary of Inez and Lillian. She's not very good without Rupert or a circle, not very powerful, but she can manage a few glamours and illusions. Enough to hold on until Rupert can find her, maybe.

The car's slowing down, the light's changing. Do something now do something now, her mind screams.

When she'd been a vengeance demon, she'd always tried to work with what she was given. Nobody understood that for her, wrong wrong wrong as it had been, she'd only been trying to even things out. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth – and then she thinks, death for a death. Okay.

Yep, she can manage a few glamours and illusions.

Stealthily she drifts her hand through the scattered stuff from her purse. Sunglasses, calculator, no, there. She's taken to carrying a few small vials of potion-powders – a woman never knows when she'll need a little something to demonstrate for Magic Places purposes. With a flick of the finger, she extricates the stopper of the nearest one.

Light streaming overhead, light filtering down – and this powder in the glass gleams, even in the shadows. It's the crushed yew, then. Okay, she can work with that.

As carefully as she can, she digs a fingertip into the powder and then brushes it over her heart, brushes it over the pulse in her throat, whispering the words of concealment under the rumble of the engine.

The effect is immediate. The world seems to pull away, the lights fade. As she falls into stasis, she imagines herself a woman under glass, wrapped in a leather binding.

The last word she says under glass is _Rupert_.

.............................................

 

From Giles and Anya's main living space, Stevie Nicks – and Brick, in a sad descant – sing 'I need a little sympathy,' and then the music stops. Brick must have finally turned off that CD, a little late.

Giles stands alone in his and Anya's bedroom, his hands empty. For a moment he can't remember why he's here. He just...

"Oh God," he whispers.

Their bed is still rumpled from their afternoon nap. His hands smooth over the duvet, and he thinks of the grey afternoon of the day, cold outside but toasty inside, and Anya slipping underneath him as he smoothed his hands over her breasts, as he opened her legs with his jeans-clad knee and then rested his weight, as his mouth trailed over her temple, drinking in her swift pulse. Oh God, the taste of her, how she delights him always, always. He can't bear this.

Just bloody stop it, he tells himself. He straightens the pillows. He makes himself concentrate.

Right, yes. Plans. Action.

When Terrence heard the news, he muttered something and left. Lindsey hovered around Giles for a minute or two longer, as if he wanted to embrace him or show some kind of human sympathy but didn't know how, then announced he'd liaise with Walter and the cops -- “I got all kinds of connections, buddy, I'll use 'em.” He'd been talking on his mobile even before he too went out the door.

Ruth and Brick had embraced him. Although their touch only just penetrated the shield of fear and cold around him, Giles did register her strength and Brick's tears. Then Brick had doggedly begun to clear the food they'd just set out, and Ruth had found Dawn and locked hands, while Dawn spoke to Tyrone on his mobile. Ty's coming here, although Giles doesn't know why.

Anya's missing. No one has any fucking idea where she's been taken. No one has any fucking idea what to do.

His hands disturb the order he's just given to their bed. He can feel his own fury underneath the ice – sodding inaction, sodding inability to _see_. Anger twists into guilt so easily, it's better to be cold...

“Giles,” Buffy says from the doorway.

When he turns to look at her, he feels an odd, lightheaded rush. Go back three spaces indeed, except the places are reversed. How many times during that last year in Sunnydale had he gone to find her in her hiding places, tried to break into her self-imposed isolation with words or stupid, ancient Watchers' precepts, tried anything to reach her. How many times had he stood just outside her door, as she's doing now, waiting for connection that didn't come.

But then, still dizzy, he thinks the places aren't reversed at all, because she stands with the same folded arms and straight-edge frown she wielded during that last horrible year, and because he is as fucking useless now as he was then.

“Giles,” she says again, in the clipped, falsely authoritative voice of a general without a plan. “Don't just stand there. Do something.”

Three spaces back, the only thing he'd had beside the cold and the fear was that utter, sickening rage. He can't go back, no, it's come with him, if he says anything he'll never be able to stop.

From behind Buffy a shadow moves. It's Spike – who, as Giles recognizes in a moment of clarity, has so often been Buffy's shadow, but is moving now to stand beside her. That's a hard place to stand, and a hard change to accept -- difficult for both of them even after all these years, maybe the source of that unease between them earlier.

But Spike now takes Buffy's hand, and after only barely perceptible hesitation, she accepts it and links fingers.

“Come on, brain-box,” Spike says. “Take the next step.”

Before Giles can move or snarl or break down, he sees what's in Spike's other hand – his own swordstick, the one Anya bought him whilst he was recovering from his torture-derived injuries. He'd been resistant, of course, always did resist her good ideas at first...

Then Spike tosses the swordstick to him. As Giles catches it, Spike repeats, “Right. Take the next step, old man.”

The swordstick rubs against Giles' burn as he closes his fingers around it. Perversely, the fleeting pain is enough to get his brain moving past that old lock--

“Locator spell,” he says. “Yes, right, I'll try a locator spell.”

“Really? You able to do that without turning us all into stink-beetles or--” Spike's automatic snark breaks apart in a sharp expulsion of air when Buffy's elbow drives into his stomach.

“Behave,” Buffy says sternly, but there's love behind the word, and there's old love when she smiles at Giles. “See? You're the brain-guy! You knew all along, and anyway I've seen you with the mojo turned up to eleven, too, there in L.A...”

Her words trail off when her glance goes to the swordstick, symbol of what had happened to him out there. He thinks of torture, he thinks of ancient pain as an arcane text hidden in the body, he tells himself to fucking not think that way about Anya.

“Locator spell,” he says again, trying to focus.

Dawn pops her head into the room – she's clearly been listening. “Water or ink?” she says professionally.

“Let's try Anya's green ink.” It's something she loves, he knows – that strange ritual of calligraphy she performs on the smallest everyday invitations, notes, thank-yous. She explained to him once that she liked green, not solely because it's the colour of American money, but because it made her think of the first spring grasses working up through melting snow. ( “Darling, I'm so proud you're thinking figuratively,” he replied, and she bit his bare ear as rightful punishment for teasing and/or condescension.) He knows that even more than green, she likes the perfection of small personal moments best of all.

“Perfect. I know where it is,” Dawn says as she disappears. Spike and Buffy have gone already, he hadn't noticed their leaving. There's a dark absence where the door should be, dark absence where his light should be.

Then Ruth emerges from the darkness – hesitantly as is her wont, but there. She waves at her handiwork, the wish-catcher hung over his and Anya's bed, and he can feel the happy released wishes charge the atmosphere, as if just for a breath he stands in a shower of sparks. “Would you... is it okay if I help anchor?” she says.

“Yes. Yes, please, Ruth.”

This time when Ruth embraces him, he feels it, and together they send out silent messages to Anya, wherever she is.

Dawn bustles back with a full, unstoppered bottle of the ink, emerald in this angle of light, and the old glass bowl they sometimes use for workings. “Are we casting in here, or should we try the study?” she says briskly. Giles can see better now: her eyes are reddened with unshed tears, but she's taken on Anya's own mantle of crisp common sense.

He looks around at his and Anya's bed, at her dainty cherrywood desk (“antique! Bought half-price, honey!”) in the corner, at all her beautiful silk vintage robes hung on the wall. She is everywhere here, in all ways. “We're casting in here.” He toes at the small round rug to centre it between bed and door. “Shall we, yes?”

He has to use the swordstick to help him get onto the floor, however, and it's pain all the way down. That doesn't matter.

Ruth moves more fluidly, however, and she is there to set out four candles. Dawn sinks into place with the ease of a young, fit woman, and then centres the bowl on the rug. Without speaking, she offers Giles the ink, and without speaking, he holds it over the bowl.

The flat has gone quiet. If Spike, Buffy, and Brick are still here, he can't sense them. Ruth sits cross-legged on his right, murmuring something that sounds like running water – no, like she's repeating “Walk on through” over and over. She touches his knee to hold him here. Dawn sits cross-legged on his left; although she doesn't speak, although she doesn't touch him now, he can feel her glowing self. But a Key's not much good if there's no door to open or map to follow. It's his job to find and unfold the map.

He gazes at the leap of candlelight. He goes inside himself.

Since Los Angeles he has done many workings under the Blind One's direction, more with Anya, more still on his own, and he's found his own inner path. Because the older he gets the less he trusts the slipperiness of words in casting, he uses image and silent song to hold him in the right place in the web of this world. Then, calling for his partner with every part of him, he sings his own mantra -- “Let your light from the lighthouse/shine on me” -- and he takes out the stopper and tips the bottle to pour out the ink. It should swirl into the bowl in a pattern he can read, making a still point on the web of green.

Nothing flows from the bottle's open mouth.

Pushing down desperation, he calls again for his Anya. He sings louder, “Let your light from the lighthouse/shine on me.”

Nothing flows.

The ink has dried between one moment and the next: unresponsive to song or invocation, unusable. Even as he holds its glass container over more glass, the ink cracks into slivers, into dust --

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Anya's gone.

“Oh, _Giles_ ,” Ruth says, and Dawn catches his hand before his grip can break the bottle.

“Dead,” he says, “Ah God, no, please,” and then drops the bottle and its desiccated life, and buries his face in his burnt, aching hands.

The world has gone silent, too cold and dark for tears. Web's torn apart.

Before he can face this unimaginable emptiness, however, Dawn pushes him back. “No, no, no,” she says in a Watcher's voice. “Think, Giles. Think. Remember California?”

For a moment his mind goes through a kaleidoscope and onto old paths: a well-disguised man in tweed opening a book with Vampyr on its cover, that man meeting Ethan and Eyghon again in the turn of a mirror, that man shattering like the glass as opera and roses and death mingled, that man tortured by Angelus in a dark room, that man drugging his Slayer and paying all manner of consequences, that man singing in a coffeehouse while a beautiful former demon watched him, that man dreaming of her on a stage in a shaft of light, that man watching her count money as she danced in a sunbeam, that man shattering again when his Slayer died after he'd committed murder for her, that man longing helplessly for the sunbeam-woman, who would claim him under a spell and he would be hers forever...

“Come on, Giles!” Dawn says, “Think, damn it. Oakvale. When we... when she found you.”

Her words send him spinning back there to that horrible space, when he'd been gone from this world, same as dead but not the same.

“You didn't show up anywhere on any map of the known worlds, not for over a day. And did she give up? She totally didn't. She pushed and pushed and pushed, til we came from England and met Inez, and planned and pulled together....”

He puts a hand on her knee to stop her spilling words, but yes, he remembers now. Remembers his broken self being cradled in Anya's lap as she interrogated him in the gentlest way possible for his sharp darling: his telling her, “You came for me. I knew you would,” and her response, “Of course, honey. I love you. Besides, you'd do the same for me.” At any other time he'd be embarrassed to this mortal coil and beyond to think Dawn had heard this private revelation of his deepest feeling and Anya's love, but now...

Three spaces back. Maybe that's the answer.

“Don't you get it yet?” Dawn says, as fiercely as the woman she's so desperately trying to save.

He fights his way out of memory and hope to say, cold and tired, “But, Dawn, Anya's been taken by ordinary people. The sign is clear enough...”

“Is it?” Ruth says unexpectedly. “How do you know what's behind any damn sign?”

And his anger's back, licking out from under the shield. “Because I'm a Watcher, for fuck's sake, and I've been studying and cross-referencing for years...” The word years echoes in his own brain. Years and worlds, rivers and webs and -- “Wait, the Blind One. I have to talk to the Blind One about this.”

“Well, duh,” Dawn says through tears he only now sees.

He's already getting to his feet. Swordstick on burn, nothing but pain. It doesn't signify.

He grasps the bottle of dried green ink in his hand. He'll take it to the Blind One for counsel. “Right, yes. We need to pull together, to find her.” His voice only cracks an infinitesimal bit on the last word. It doesn't signify. Only Anya signifies.

When Ruth blows out the ritual-candles, the light in the world dims a little. But then she's holding on to him, even as he takes his first step outside the bedroom, under Buffy and Spike's quiet gazes. “Giles, I'll walk the walk with you.”

“Me too,” Dawn says.

On a rush of air the flat's front door blows open – Tyrone, wild eyes and bruised dark face and splashed, ruined suit. “Giles, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I ran after the car, but I couldn't stop it, forgive me--”

Giles can't stop, but he manages a tight smile and a quick, passing grasp of Tyrone's equally bruised hand. “Not your fault, Ty. Thank you for trying. Dawn, stay and take care of him.”

Her protest is swallowed by the slam of the door, by the thud of feet and swordstick against the treads, by the murmur of the Blind Willie Johnson song that keeps him steady, that he barely knows he's humming.

......................................................

 

The slam of a door wakes Anya from deep, cold sleep. She's still under glass, she thinks, she's still wrapped up safe.

_I don't know why the bitch died, I didn't hit her that hard,_ one rough voice says, _it's your fuckin' fault._

_Oh fuck off, let's just dump her and get rid of the goddamn body,_ says the other voice.

Light streaming in, water pouring over glass, cold inside turning to ice: Anya catalogues all of these strange sensations as if she's standing on the other side of the room, no, the other side of the world. The death-illusion's holding, but she's only now realizing there's a big, honking problem --

Light goes away as the two men grab at her ankles and pull. She's sliding deadweight, unable to stop anything, unable to hold on.

She hits the pavement hard enough to jolt the illusion but not break it, hard enough to break a bone or two under the glass. One of the men kick at her ribs – another snap, another slither of ice to fill emptiness – and then light streams back as they move away. It's raining. No, it's sleeting. Water pouring over her glass case, cold inside turning to ice.

She hears the slams of two doors, hears the engine roar as the Mercedes backs away.

The problem is, she thinks with her last conscious effort, she can't take off the illusion alone. Rupert's going to think she's dead. He's not going to be able to find her because of her own stupid, stupid spell.

She's always been the one to screw herself up.

As she slides into deeper, pain-haunted stasis, the second-to-last word she thinks is _Rupert_. The last word is _Sorry._


	3. Chapter 3

Giles is dimly aware he's shivering after his quick walk across the street – so cold, so wet, even after just a couple of minutes. Better night to be inside than out, Christ, where's Anya...

But when he pushes open the door to Blind Willie's, the music and streaming lights assault him out of that mental track for a moment.

Good crowd tonight, he notices through his instinctive recoil. Shanice is spinning old funk music loud enough to get the surliest customers dancing, Esteban is mixing drinks for the loungers at the bar – it's as if the world is on its normal course, as if they don't understand the Anya-shaped hole out there, as if they don't understand the dance must have ended. Giles falters on another rush of anger, stronger than grief or hope. It's so cold, inside and out.

Then Ruth squeezes his hand – right, he's still holding onto her, he can't feel anything properly – and Esteban looks up. Even from here, Giles can read the worry and good faith in him.

Once Giles and Ruth get to the bar, Esteban throws one gym-developed arm around him. Whispers, “Find her,” in Giles' ear. Opens the hidden door to the Blind One's and pushes them up the first dim flight of stairs. They go up the next flight on their own.

In the office outside the Blind One's room Terrence sits at his desk, his arms a pillow for his hidden face. Lindsey sits on the old loveseat recovered by Ruth and Anya last summer, a floral touch in this workaday room; when he sees Giles, he snaps shut his mobile and leaps to his feet.

“We know about the locator spell. Dawn called,” he says without preamble. “The boss wants to see you.” He surveys Giles. “Without weapons, I'm guessing.”

Terrence looks up at that. “Yes. No weapons in there.”

"Okay, Dad," Ruth says, and takes the stick out of Giles' hand. “I'll be here, Giles, if needed.”

He would thank her, except the shivers are getting stronger. In a detached way he self-diagnoses the likelihood of shock, but it doesn't matter. The closed door to the Blind One's world seems to be expanding, a portal to the answers Giles needs so badly. Yet first: “Lindsey, any word from the police?”

Lindsey looks down – one of his poker tells for a bad hand. “Walter hasn't got anything yet, but I'm sure any minute now...”

Through numbed lips Giles gets out, “That's a sodding bad bluff, McDonald.” Lindsey looks away, Terrence hides his face again.

Only Ruth is composed. She's murmuring again, over and over just as she had when centring for the spell, “Walk on through, walk on through.” She lets go of him only to place her hand in the small of his back, helping him stay steady. He knocks on the door to that soft cascade, Walk on through walk on through.

"Come in, Rupert,” the Blind One says. “Turn the door and open it for yourself.”

Giles' shivers pass away as soon as he's inside; the austere space is golden and warm. The Blind One, a long ceremonial robe thrown over his usual white shirt and black trousers, stands shimmering in front of the three guitars on the wall. The robe and his skin ripple, light subtly reflecting all colours from the row of lit candles on the floor in front of him.

But the Blind One isn't smiling, and he leans heavily on his cane. Giles' hope contracts to the space of an old faded wish, then turns to ice, then disappears.

The Blind One says in that basso rumble of his, slightly hoarse, “Ruth my child, you and Lindsey shut the door -- but stay close. Terrence, please make the calls as arranged.”

The door shuts with a soft but emphatic click, and Giles and the Blind One are alone.

He should go over and make his gesture of respect, Giles knows, but for a moment the memory of Anya's graceful obeisances, her loving bows over the Great One's hand to touch that other-worldly ring, freezes him. He bows his head to fight the chill of it -- and to honour the Blind One nevertheless.

“So, my Watcher, our dear Anya has been taken,” the Blind One says. The guitars on the wall resound with a warning discordance. The next words come at him like a blow. “Tell me what you've failed to see.”

The frost breaks apart into even more pain. Giles has seen the Blind One angry before, of course, although never directed at him – but he opens himself to the deserved hurt. He says nothing.

“You know I can do nothing with this kind of human evil – and I said to you when I first met you, Rupert Giles, that I needed eyes to see the world outside. I cannot look for her, not if she isn't caught in the shadow-web. So why have you come to me to do your job?”

Giles swallows the worst of the ache. This is for Anya, and after all, it's duty. He's always been bound by chains of obligation – except those he broke himself. Nobody's fault but mine, he sings to himself, then, out loud, “The locator spell... only dust, Blind One, as if she's... I don't know what else to do. I don't know how to find her.” From the depths of his pocket he pulls the stoppered bottle of green ink-dust and holds it out mutely. He doesn't trust words or voice any more. Nobody's fault but mine.

With that odd grace for so large a being, the Blind One leaps, spinning, over the candles and alights gently on the other side. The flames dance in response, merry as Anya's laugh, high as the ceiling, and the guitars sound again, harmoniously this time.

When he reaches out to take the bottle, one of his claws nicks Giles' hand. A drop of blood blossoms, then fades.

This tiny pain, strangely enough, clears Giles' mind and gives him his voice. He looks up into the Blind One's stitched-shut eyes, which in this well-lit room shimmer with all the colours in the world. “I'm sorry, Great One. I've failed you, and her.”

“Do you think our darling Anya deserves this?” the Blind One asks, just above a whisper.

“No!” The response is immediate, and too loud. Anger's coming out through the pain.

“I _said_ , Do you think she deserves this?” The repetition is a rumble deeper than the world.

Giles breathes all of the broken stuff out – pain, fear, hope. “No. God, no.”

“Then why do you think you do?”

Right, that's... unexpected. Unanswerable. Giles' mouth drops open, his forehead wrinkles, he can't form words.

The Blind One leans in and kisses Giles on the forehead, just on the point of deepest confusion. “'Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?'” he says kindly.

“ _Hamlet_ ,” Giles says, clinging to the certainties of fact and identification. “William Shakespeare.”

The Blind One quirks a sad smile. “William, as you say, Shakespeare. A bright fellow. I'll want you to think about that later.”

He spins around with that preternatural full-bodied lightness, and throws the ink-bottle into the candlefire, which now reach almost to the ceiling. Green smoke coalesces in the midst of the flames – the result looks like a screen of some kind. No, a window.

“Ruth, Lindsey, to me!” the Blind One calls. “Terrence, is it arranged?”

The door opens at once. “Yes, Blind One, everything's ready,” Terrence says, and he shows Ruth and Lindsey in. Giles can hear footsteps on the stairs, too, then as Terrence pulls the door almost shut, Spike and Buffy arrive on the top step with twin heroic thuds.

Giles is very confused now indeed. “Sir?”

“Wait, Giles. We don't have time to discuss this.” The Blind One is all business now, comfort and questions alike gone. “Lindsey, you will play Blind Willie's guitar at the appropriate moment. Ruth, put your arm around Rupert and focus him until I tell you.”

Lindsey, muttering something indistinguishable, goes over to lift – reverently – the old bluesman's guitar off the wall. Ruth leans in and embraces Giles one more time. He accepts the help, best he can. He's not entirely steady on his feet.

“Walk on through,” she says, this time as fiercely as he's ever heard her.

“Well, my dear, he'll be singing rather than striding,” the Blind One says, “but bless you, the thought is very much the same.” He points his cane at the window in the smoke. “A very good evening to you and yours, Krevlornswath.”

Green on green, the face of Lorne appears in the window. He is, Giles notes with a complete lack of surprise, wearing a shiny Hollywood dowager's turban (red to match his horns) and gold hoop earrings. “Hey, boss! And oh, Rupert-roo, I am so very sorry to hear about our beautiful girl. Let's cut the improvised intro and get right to the anagogic goodness, yes?”

Before Giles can answer, or even greet him – Lorne has become an annual visitor to Deep Ellum, loved by all, including the Blind One – that bloody Ethan's face appears over Lorne's shoulder. “Yes, darling, do hurry up,” he says, although Giles isn't entirely sure at whom the acid 'darling' is aimed. “We have clubbing to do, and the night awaits.”

“Pumpkin,” Lorne says fondly, patting Ethan's hand. “Let Daddy work, hmmm?”

“That's your cue, my Watcher. Go three paces forward,” the Blind One says. “Have you a song-selection in mind?”

His mind reeling, his frozen disappeared hope coming back, Giles obeys the Blind One's instructions -- and Ruth lets him go. He stops right in front of the screen from which Lorne and Ethan gaze.

And he looks over at Lindsey. McDonald gives the softest version of his shark's grin: “The usual, buddy?"

They have played together many times in the past five years, and Lindsey does know him. Despite his spell-casting failure back in the flat-- “Right, yes. The usual,” Giles says.

He takes his worry-totem out of his pocket, however, and gazes at the sign of eternity and says Anya's name before anything else. It is here that the clue to his heart's mystery lies, he thinks.

For an instant, for an eternity, he sees Anya in his arms again, he sees lights, he feels joy. He knows what he'll sing; this is why.

When Lindsey plays the first chord, Giles closes his eyes – but he still sees the talisman. “'Let it shine on me/ Let it shine on me/ Let your light from the lighthouse/Shine on me...'” he sings, as Lindsey plays. They've never been so in tune. He sings, and he fancies he's holding Anya in his arms, it's so cold, she's so cold--

“Giles,” Lorne breaks in. It takes Giles a breath to let the music go. “She's near a fair? Fairgrounds? Lying in a parking lot in front of one of those stadium-thingies. Alive, I think, but...I can't see very well.” The Host's lightness is gone. “Go. Hurry. Take your swordstick.”

“Hurry and carry a big stick, Ripper,” Ethan echoes. “And give your wild woman a kiss from me when you find her.”

Giles normally would boggle at that, or growl, but he registers it dimly as a puzzle to be solved later. 'Fair,' 'fairgrounds' – it can only be Fair Park, the site of the Texas State Fair. Alive and close by, she's so close...

As Giles gets to the door, the Blind One calls after him, “Terrence and Miss Summers, if you'll accompany our brave Rupert?”

Terrence, keys in hand, opens the door. “Already on it, boss,” he says, and Buffy catches Giles' hand and pulls him over the threshold.

With a strangely courtly gesture Spike offers the swordstick to Giles – who has to put away his talisman to accept it, but it doesn't matter, for the talisman is with him. After the exchange is made, Spike twitches his leather coat and says, “Well, let's be off--”

“Not you, William,” the Blind One calls. “Come in and chat with me, please. I have a few questions for you, and I'd like to hear one of your verses.”

The image of Spike's shocked, almost young-looking face stays with Giles as he and Buffy plunge down the back staircase after Terrence, as they dash through the rain and then scramble into Terrence's aged Buick. Buffy is stifling giggles.

Once settled, however, with one finger Giles touches the chilly droplets lingering on the sleeve of his light jacket. He thinks of that fleeting dream-vision of a cold Anya lying in his arms. If she's been lying out in the rain as well... Better inside than out, he thinks again. “Christ. Could be hypothermia,” he says to himself. “I don't know how long she's been out here.”

Terrence doesn't say anything, but the old car's engine roars as he punches the gas.

“We'll get to her in time, Giles,” Buffy says confidently, and threads his arm with hers. “It's going to be all good.”

He tears himself away from his fears, just for a moment, and brushes his cheek over her hair in a paternal gesture. "Are you perhaps lying to me, Buffy?"

“Nope,” she says, in the voice of a general who believes in her troops.

He touches her hair one more time, and then looks out the window at the lights streaming by, a flash and then gone.

Anya loves the state fair, he thinks. For the past few years she's dragged him out to that bloody vulgar spectacle, allowed him to eat hideously unhealthy yet rather tasty things which otherwise he'd sneer at, and then, as the ritual final treat, made them ride the Ferris wheel at night. The Texas Star, it's called, the biggest of its kind in America. She likes the statistic, as she likes all kinds of quantitative measurement. She likes the way the earth spreads and curves underneath them. She likes the lights.

More, though, she always likes kissing him at the beginning of the ride as the wheel begins to turn. She then kisses him more deeply as their little gondola hits the very top, as earth spreads and curves, outlined in light. He doesn't much care for heights – a bit of vertigo, nothing more-- but her taste and pleasure distract him from his fears.

Actually, one of the things he treasures most about her is the way she kisses just as enthusiastically, as present, on the way down as the pattern fades, as she does on the way up.

The old Buick turns a corner. Lights stream by, a flash and then gone.

Giles' commitment band hums pleasantly in time with the lights, so strongly that Giles looks down -- and his heart leaps. He's been so cold, so shocked, that he hadn't realized...

The commitment band Anya locked on him almost five years ago is still tight on his wrist. If Anya were dead, the charm would have ended, it'd have slipped off.

For the first time, he allows hope to warm him.

“Almost there,” Terrence says.

The old Buick turns one last corner. Lights stream by, a flash and then gone, and then nothing but lights.

A small, broken figure lies under one of the car park's street lamps. Anya, he knows it's Anya....

But two mysterious figures bend over her, putting her in shadow.

“Right then,” Giles says, and he grasps his swordstick in his left hand. Almost there.


	4. Chapter 4

When the light goes away, Anya fights out of the depths of her own dark, cold life-under-glass and opens her eyes.

Two men bend over her. For a moment she thinks they're the same men who grabbed her and threw her out here, wherever here is, but their unwashed smells are different, their rained-on faces shaped wrong. Or maybe that's her vision blurred by the spell.

She really is stupid, she tells herself, this is completely deserved, and closes her eyes again on pain and hopelessness.

“Bitch seems dead,” one man says, and the other says, “Wonder if she's got any money on her,” and the first one says heartily, “I always say you gotta check these things out.”

The hands which roll her over seem just like the guys who took her – rough, jolting her bruises and breaks. Her face goes into a puddle of cold water-and-oil, she thinks that she'll be drowned under glass. She thinks one more time, _Rupert honey I'm so sorry_ and _I love you_ \--

Then the asphalt heaves, no, it's the grip of these men turning her over, and she can breathe again. Sort of. Her ribs hurt. But now the streetlamp's beams are shining even in the rain, and also two headlights cut the night, with the world roaring like an engine.

“Well, motherfucker, seems somebody wants to play,” one man says, and she sees rain and light splash off a hunting blade.

This death-illusion's got to go, she thinks dizzily, there's got to be a way to shake it off so she can warn these headlight people. She shivers under glass, and then there's one painful crack in the magic encasing her, she's shivering all the way now. It's real cold, too real.

Door slams. Engine's still roaring. She'll have to shout.

Before she can even begin to make her voice push through her spell and her now chattering teeth, though, Rupert says in his most dangerous voice, “Step away from her.”

Trembling, she makes herself look. Buffy and Terrence – the short Slayer looking just as tough as the enormous former football player – flank Rupert at his most menacing. As she watches, he lifts his cane and clicks off the locks. The hidden sword reveals itself.

The two men apparently are not as stupid as looks, bad hygiene, and hunting knife would suggest, because they take off running without waiting for more.

“Maybe they're vamps! 'Cause if they were vamps, I could go after them and do some really fine damage,” Buffy says wistfully. “I haven't gotten to slay in, like, a week. I'm all tin-man rusty. Tin- _wo_ man.”

“Well, let's make a deal -- you chase and corral 'em, Buffy, and if they're human I'll take care of 'em,” Terrence suggests.

But then Rupert's there, sans swordstick and dropping awkwardly to his knees in the wet, and Anya loses track of the nearby ethical-strategic discussion and tries to lift her hand to him. The crack in the glass hasn't been enough to let her move, though.

“Ah, God, darling,” Rupert says in a ripped-out-of-him way, and then she's pulled up and into his arms.

It's so warm here, he's so wonderful, and she'd cry for joy except she really does hurt and it's freezing still, which reminds her -- “Why aren't you wearing your coat?” she tries to say, but the remnants of illusion still choke her.

She feels Rupert's hand cupping her cheek. “What have we here?” he says with an attempt at lightness (which fails badly). His fingers seem to sink into the spell-glass, for a second sending it shimmering into drops like the rain, and he murmurs something she can't quite hear before saying, “Death-glamour, of course. Protection. Oh, love...”

He hides his face in her hair for a second, and she doesn't know if the deep body-shakes are hers or his.

But he pulls himself together to say, “Right. I think you're awake, yes? Please... Yes. Of course you are. Er, right... let's do the counterspell together on Three. One, Two--”

On Three she says the words of unveiling, and Rupert repeats the same words. The unheard and spoken chime together perfectly – they do cast together all the time, after all -- and all the illusion drops away.

Her cold, racking shivers start in earnest then, despite the warmth and really excessive tightness of his grasp.

“Here we are,” he says hoarsely. “Darling--”

“I'm so sorry, Rupert.” She forces this out over his endearment, then squints at him. “But where's your coat? Or brolly? You know better than to come out in November rain without protection from the elements.”

He chuckles, sort of, against her hair. “I've been rather concerned with things other than outerwear, Anya.”

“Yes, but--”

“Not one more word right now,” he says in his stern, masterful voice, which would be significantly more attractive if she weren't feeling quite so battered and cold and/or if they were in bed. “We need to get you to hospital.”

“I just need blankets. Something. Maybe something for my ribs, they're--”

“Hospital.” He looks over his shoulder. “Buffy, could you hold the car door for us?”

“Already there,” Buffy says, and then murmurs something. Anya dazedly peers around Rupert's shoulder to see her not chasing down would-be mugger-types but talking on a cellphone.

Terrence is there to unobtrusively help Rupert, who's carrying her, to his feet. “'Lo, Anya,” he says as he steers them to his car. She notes that he's picked up Rupert's swordstick too, and safely sheathed it. “Glad we found you.”

Rupert's grip is a little painful on her bruised ribs, but Anya decides not to mention it – she's feeling really fuzzy anyway, and still shivery. But, “How did you find me? And, Terrence, thanks, I'm sorry, I'm kind of soaked and might drip on your leather upholstery--”

“Never mind,” Terrence and Rupert say, together but not. Rupert's sounding a little ragged, poor honey.

She tries to express love and remorse, and also mention her troubling lack of purse or insurance card, but she's cold again, shivers coming like waves, and she has to set her teeth together to stop the clatter. She closes her eyes and leans her head against Rupert's shoulder, holding on.

Once safely in and underway, Buffy talks softly to Anya about the sad state of her Bill Blass vintage coat, saying that it's probably not salvageable but she and Dawn will go shopping with her tomorrow. Terrence sings along with the radio on low. Rupert wipes her dirty face with his handkerchief, then strokes her hair with a trembling hand.

She does manage to say, “Honey, sorry – what happened to the car?”

His hand stills, then curves around her nape. “Really, darling, I don't know and I don't care. Just... sod the car.”

“Surely that would be painful,” she says, overly literal in her exhaustion, and on his gust of amusement, she opens her eyes to watch the lights passing, a flash and then gone.

......................................

 

The small partner-explosion occurs halfway home in Terrence's car – which is later than Giles might have bet on, actually.

The hospital visit itself is horrendous. They wait for what seems like forever in the midst of Casualty hell, a drug addict screeching on one side, a sad elderly woman moaning in a wheelchair on the other. Anya's hypothermic shivers have eased, but that means her injuries are more apparent – including what looks like a broken finger. Giles cradles her, whispers the comforting if heavily edited tale of How Everyone Worked Together to Find Her in her ear, and beats down his relief-fueled anger, while Terrence goes off and finds a nurse for the older woman and Buffy does her best Slayer-general stoicism for the room at large.

In the end, a tired doctor sees them. Anya is deemed to have warmed enough, thanks to Giles's shared body-heat and the relative swiftness with which they found her, and her ribs are strapped, her scrapes cleaned, her broken little finger iced and splinted, and her sprained ankle attended to. No head injury, remarkably, which leads Buffy to remark rudely about Giles' propensity for same. Honestly, the way some people cling to ancient history...

As they come out of the billing area (far worse than Casualty itself), Dawn, Tyrone, and Spike arrive. Giles sees Anya's quick glance go to Dawn's still ring-less hand – what the sodding hell had she expected, he thinks in irritation, that Ty would ask then, during such a crisis? -- and then listens to Anya's guileless inquiry regarding Spike's first encounter with the Blind One, which Giles only then realizes the wanker has neatly avoided in the preceding visits.

“Great One damn well criticised my scansion!” Spike says, or almost yelps – but Giles can see something else in the git's eyes: guilt and sorrow unrelated to bad poetry; the burden of the soul. Buffy must see it too, because she wraps herself around Spike right there, just past the sliding glass doors. Whatever had been bothering the two of them has clearly passed, or more likely has been put aside for the night.

It has stopped raining by now, water glistening on asphalt to mark the danger past, but the midnight wind is colder.

Dawn and Tyrone, after assuring themselves that all is well and Tyrone forgiven for what Anya insists is not his fault anyway, bear the still linked Buffy and Spike back to their townhouse. Terrence, forestalling talk of taxis with an irritated wave, places Giles and Anya in the Buick.

As they reach the outskirts of Deep Ellum, Giles' mobile rings. It's Walter in his official capacity, reporting that their Mercedes has been found, totalled, in south Dallas, along with the two felons who had car-jacked it. Anya's purse will be held as evidence, but they should be able to pick up licenses and credit cards tomorrow, Walter says, and then: “Giles, I don't know whether you'll want to tell Anya right away, but these guys? This isn't their first car-jacking. And they've got a bad record... well, it's just damn lucky she wasn't hurt more seriously. You know.”

Yes, Giles knows, or at least his imagination fills in the gaps. Actually his imagination has already filled in these gaps with the worst memories of his own time under Angelus' and Ethan's hands, embellished these with true-crime nightmares. To hear the confirmation like this just brings his terrified anger closer to the surface. But he manages to thank Walter for the information, confirm that he and Anya will be at the police station in the morning to make a report, and hide his dismay at learning Shanice is planning to drop her infamous zucchini-walnut muffins off for their breakfast, before he clicks off.

When he relays this information, Anya's eyes fill with tears. “I'm sorry, honey. I mean, the worry, and now the muffins you hate – Terrence, don't you tell Shanice I said that!”

“I didn't hear a thing,” Terrence assures her, but his deeply amused smile fills the rearview mirror.

“Anya, enough about the sodding muffins,” Giles says, and drifts his hand across her cheek. The fact that his hand's still trembling annoys him beyond speech – except that somehow without his volition he's still talking. “And stop bloody apologising, unless you're going to say something about leaving your cell at home or ignoring Tyrone's quite proper request to walk you out or --”

“Do you really want to go there now?” she interrupts, tears blinked away in her own anger. Except that the poor darling is so pale in the passing lights, and the light catches a bit of a bruise on her forehead. Yes, there by her temple, just where he kissed her before they had sex that afternoon, only a few hours ago. But despite her injuries she's saying heatedly, “Because I also was trying to protect your stupid favourite thing in the whole world, your Mercedes, and that's why I parked it at the other end of the parking lot just like you wanted!”

He's not sure why this is the inciting remark, except that now hurt mingles with his lingering terror and quite justifiable rage: “I told you, _sod_ the fucking car.” Then, “Do you honestly think that the bloody car is most important to me?”

Terrence says swiftly, “Don't mind me, folks,” and turns up the radio to a soothing hum. It's one of those 'Quiet Storm' stations, all soulful crooning and what not. The sound of strings fills the interior of the Buick, drowns the argument.

Her eyes widen – so dark, so sad, so hurt. “No. I shouldn't have said that,” she whispers under cover of the music. “I'm sorry.”

“No, no, my fault. Anya...” He carefully enfolds her in his arms and rocks them both back and forth. He's not sure whom he's easing most, her or himself. “Darling, darling, my filthy temper.”

“Sorry,” she sighs again. “I deserved it. I was stupid.”

“ _No._ ”

“The death-glamour was a dumb idea, too. 'Cause if you hadn't found me by some miracle, green-skinned Pylean miracles included, well--”

“Stop, stop, stop.” He doesn't know how to say what comes next, how to frame Walter's words and his own mistakes, but then Terrence pulls up in front of Magic Places, and the moment is lost.

Even before Giles can help Anya out of the car, Lindsey and Ruth pour out of the doors to Blind Willie's. (This elicits a subterranean growl from Terrence, but he minds his manners, for which Giles is unspeakably thankful.) Lindsey kisses Anya on the cheek and says generally that he has a great story to tell them later about Spike's encounter with the Blind One, and then walks away, laugh-singing.

Anya is holding onto Ruth by then – two strong women, two survivors, Giles thinks with a twist of the heart – but she calls after Lindsey, “Buffy and Spike still have a couple days here. We'll try the games-night again tomorrow night, McDonald!”

Lindsey waves his hand in acknowledgment and then disappears back into Blind Willie's. Ruth, however, says, “Anya, won't you be too sore to entertain?”

Giles curves his hand around Anya's nape. For the first time in an hour or so, he can feel the edge of his slight burn, but her skin is soft against it. “Let us, er, square the accounts, please, Ruth. Terrence,” he says, and Anya leans back into his hold and manages a smile that he can read even from behind.

He does know what she needs. Sometimes.

When he and Anya reach their flat, however, she's shaking again. Before he can speak, she says in a voice just barely above tears, “I need to get out of these clothes, honey. Um--”

“Do you need help, darling?”

“No. No, I'll just sponge off and maybe...” She sways. “I'm kind of tired. Is it okay if I just get into bed after that?”

“Of course. But you've missed supper – shall I bring you a cup of tea and a bite to eat in bed?”

“Sure,” she says, “thank you, honey,” and after a gentle caress of his arm, she moves slowly into the bedroom. The guardian cat comes on silent feet from Christ knows where and follows her inside. Anya doesn't shut the bedroom door, but oddly it feels as if she does.

The broken pieces of their argument hang in the warm interior air. He'll have to screw his courage to the sticking place, he thinks, then mentally balks at his own phrasing – the Scottish play not being the best omen, obviously.

Not that he's superstitious.

With a frown he pitches his swordstick into the umbrella stand and listens to the clatter.

The flat is tidy again (Brick and Dawn and Ruth's doing, he'd wager), although the cards and games are still laid out on their tables. He walks by the ice-cream table and looks out at the shine of the Blind One's lit window, then looks down.

Orange cards for Chance. Yellow cards for Community Chest. Wildly coloured play-money in a neat and tidy stack, all accounted for.

He picks up a Chance card and without looking at it, flicks it between his fingers. Yes, let's try this.

The after-effects of the evening begin to drain away from him, and he smiles.

A hot tisane and a plate of crackers, grapes, and cheese are waiting on her nightstand when she comes out of the bathroom into the teasing light of the bedside candles. He's in the middle of changing into his pyjama trousers and T-shirt, but he watches her tentative movements – the splint's going to make it difficult for her, he fears.

“Darling, let me help you,” he says hastily, pulling his shirt over his head and letting it fall. “And if you say 'I'm sorry' one more time, I shall bellow like a whale.”

“Do whales bellow?” she says with a tiny smile.

“When their partners keep insisting on blatantly wrong statements, they do.” As he helps her into bed, he adds, “Also, it will give me pleasure to feed you.”

“Nice approach,” she murmurs, the smile widening.

After they're tucked in bed, he waits until she's chewing her third grape before saying, “Shall we go back to our, er, discussion? Just for a moment?”

She swallows, and then sighs, “Oh God. Okay.” Then, with those beautiful brown eyes anxious again, she puts her splinted hand on his. “Honey, even though you don't want to hear it--”

“No. You have absolutely nothing to be sorry for. Things just happen.” He sends his fingers travelling up to gently link with hers, regardless of anything in the way. “Darling, that death-glamour... er, what with what Walter told me, and... it was a bloody good idea, is all. Stonking idea. Brilliant.”

“But I couldn't take it off by myself. Which was stupid.”

“No. You didn't have to do it by yourself, Anya. Because I love you so much, and I was looking for you, and I knew.” He can't look at her for this bit: he doesn't want her to see any marks of pain. “Well, I knew once I was helped. My locator spell failing, and I feared... and that was bloody stupid, because our commitment band held fast. But then I figured it out.” He gives up explanation as a bad job, and finishes, “We're connected, you and I. Partnered.”

Grapes and a cracker slide off the plate as she stretches gingerly towards him, as she puts her other hand on his commitment band. He watches one of the grapes fall into the valley between them and keep rolling.

“Honey,” she whispers, “you're pretty darn smart.”

“I didn't think so at the time,” he says, eyes downcast. “And, well, there was my usual—”

“Brooding? Guilt-ridden, completely useless br--”

“Yes, thank you, my love.” He sends her an honest grin at that. She's so lovely in the candlelight, smiling back at him. Sunbeam-woman, who claimed him under a spell and whom he will love forever... “And in case you start blaming yourself again or talking rubbish about deserving pain – completely without bloody cause, I might add – you should think of the Shakespeare quote the Blind One walloped me with tonight. 'Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?'”

Her grasp on his commitment band tightens, and she says the words again under her breath. He watches the play of emotions – sadness, understanding – across that expressive face. Then she says in her normal brisk voice, “Shakespeare, huh. That does put vengeance as well as guilt in a new light. No wonder D'Hoffryn didn't encourage classical theatre-going.”

Then she calmly drinks her tisane while he lies back on his pillows and howls himself helpless with laughter.

Once he comes out of his fit, and once he retrieves the renegade grapes, tosses the last cracker to the guardian cat for attack and play, and puts up the tea-mug, he blows out all but one candle and gets back into bed. She's hurting, he can see by the lines around her eyes and mouth, and he's feeling the strain of cold and exertion himself – but he arranges them both for ease and connection, and then kisses her.

It's languorous and slow, this kiss. He anchors himself with a hand just touching the strapping on her ribs, with thumb tracing the lower curve of her breast; he reminds himself that tonight is just for this. His mouth moves on hers, his tongue tracing the curve of hers. Tonight, yes, is just for this.

Here she is, he thinks. Here she bloody well is. Here she's his.

He tastes when her exhausted tears begin, the shudder and the salt. He doesn't stop. Then, “All right, darling?”

She doesn't answer him with words but with sweetness, with movement in stillness.

When they've drunk enough love for the moment, he pulls back just a bit. She's smiling now, with a reddened mouth fit for Sleeping Beauty fresh from the apple.

He says, “Anya, are you awake?”

She rolls her eyes, still smiling. “Yes, Rupert. Pay attention.”

He puts his hand around her commitment-band. “Darling, I keep asking you as if it were a joke, but this time – this time, er, I'm really asking. Anya, do you want... do you need marriage? The formal words, the signing of papers, all that?”

She gazes at him for a long time before she puts her hand around his band so that they mirror each other. She speaks with the honesty he loves in her. “You know, really, honey? Why mess with it? We're already married in all the ways that matter.”

“Yes. Yes, we are,” he says, and they kiss again, languorous, eased.

Then, still connected to her, he pulls the Chance card out from under his pillow. “It's been a night of Chance, darling. I just... do you want to see what our Chance says?”

“Risky, after all that...” She chews on her reddened lip, then nods. “Go ahead.”

He flips it over. In the dim light, passing and then moving on past the card, they have to strain to read it.

**Advance to Go. (Collect 200 Dollars.)**

“That's much better than Shakespeare,” she says seriously.

He's still laughing to himself when he feels her fall asleep at last. After he blows out the last candle, he tucks himself around her. He kisses her temple, just there by the bruise.

“Here we are, my love,” he says one more time, listening to the music in the words, and then follows her into sleep.


End file.
